A Perfect Marriage is a Myth

When the reality of marriage doesn’t meet our expectations, we tend to blame reality, the other persons but it is never us, then we ask the question, is there such a thing as a perfect marriage?

When it comes to marriage, we expect the fairy tale. Raised on Cinderella and Ozzie and Harriet, we’re convinced that marriage will solve all of our problems, our partner will meet all of our needs, and that we’ll live happily ever after.

But a great many of us don’t get to the happily ever after part; we get divorced. So where did we go wrong?

Mary Laner thinks that we expect too much. A professor of sociology at Arizona State University, Laner says that when the marriage or the partner fails to live up to our ideals, we don’t recognize that our expectations were much too high. Instead, we blame our spouse or that particular relationship, my ex said we are not compatible.

“We think that our partner can meet all our needs, know what we’re thinking, and love us even when we’re not terribly lovable. When those things don’t happen, then we blame our partner,” Laner says. “We think that maybe if we had a different spouse, it would be better.” We dream of a perfect marriage and most times it is something that we get, not what we are prepared to give.

The ASU sociologist studied the marital expectations of unmarried college students. She compared their expectations with those of people who have been married for about 10 years. The significantly higher expectations held by the students, she says, come straight out of the “happily ever after” fantasy.

“Such irrationality can lead us to conclude that when the ‘thrill is gone,’ or when the marriage or partner doesn’t live up to our inflated ideals, divorce or abandonment of the marriage in some other form is the solution,” Laner says.

In fact, the divorce rate in the United States is just over half of the marriage rate. Many researchers, including Laner, lay at least part of the blame for this statistic on those unrealistic expectations. Laner points out that much of the existing marital therapy literature is concerned with the problem. And, she adds, many of us continue to take our zealous ideas of what marriage should be into the next relationship and the next, and so on.

“People who marry again following divorce, one might think, would not carry along inflated expectations,” Laner says. “Yet, these second and later marriages have higher divorce rates than do first marriages. As far as expectations are concerned, this may be a reflection of the primacy of hope over experience, followed once again by disillusionment.” It became very clear when in the year that my ex and I separated, quite a few couples just went down, and I wondered if it was the recession, but it had to be more than that.

“A colleague of mine once said that one way to approach this was to say to yourself, ‘You can never expect too little of marriage.’ But it’s like any other partnership,” Laner says. “You hope that your relationship is going to be a happy one, where you will be cooperatively solving problems and where the rewards will exceed the costs. “Inflated expectations aren’t going to do a thing positive for you. They’re going to spoil things,” she says. “You go into the relationship thinking it’s going to be worlds better than it has any likelihood of being. When those expectations aren’t met, the chances are pretty good you’re going to turn your anger and disappointment outward instead of inward.” I did!

A perfect Marriage

Today I am much more realistic when it comes to relationships and marriage, I think now I understand the words for better or worse until death, it means only that, and that is what life is all about, tomorrow is not promised to anyone, we can however decide to enjoy the journey, a perfect marriage may be a myth but we can enjoy the experience with our partner and friend.